Passers-by - Jos de Putter

(in the framework of POEMS FROM THE SEA)

Original Dutch film title:
PASSANTEN
Year:
2005
Length:
7 minutes

Tagline:
Bus shelters tell stories about memories, love and departure; inspired by a poem by Johanna Kruit.

Logline:
In PASSERS-BY, you become participant of fragments of conversations in a variety of bus shelters in the deserted landscape of the Dutch province of Zeeland.
The conversations seem to have been left behind after the travellers have left and the bus shelters tell stories about memories, love and departure.

Poem:
Oosterschelde steam pumping station

A tall chimney points the way that ends in a
lane. We didn’t know that, right beside the mill, a house
remained uninhabitable. The slanting gutter rustles
with rain that beats on bricks. The field around it moves
with the wind. A long gone child may have looked out through the windows. We see the view: sheep in the grass,
a distant tower. By a brook, a farm. To one side an inlet
catching water. Everything that passed stayed on. Did
visitors come? Were the banks of the Scheld and the dyke
enough as foothold for a child ? When does
nostalgia start for distant horizons and does
a day then come when you watch indifferently here?

Past slides by, I free myself. We are
passers-by in a landscape: our comforting is not enough.

Johanna Kruit
translation: Martin Cleaver, Peter Verstegen

Cast:
N/A

Crew:
script, direction & editing: Jos de Putter
research: Wink de Putter
camera: Stef Tijdink
sound: Robert Wieriks Bosch
editing: Stefan Kamp
sound design: Alex Booy
producer: Digna Sinke

this film is financially supported by:
Nederlands Fonds voor de Film
Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties
Provincie Zeeland
Omroep Zeeland
ThuisKopie Fonds